The Birth Pangs of a New Order
By Rod Dreher, European Conservative. (image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
For many years, American conservatives used to point out examples of liberal hypocrisy by drawing attention to some offensive or outrageous thing that the Left had done, but that had gone unreported or otherwise tolerated by the media, then saying, “If conservatives had done that, you would have raised hell.” The idea was to shame liberals into reforming themselves to become fair and balanced.
It rarely worked, but it’s not hard to see why it might have done, back when the Left at least paid lip service to liberal principles. That’s ancient history. The reason to do it today—the only reason—is to reveal to the Right how decadent the systems that govern our societies have become, and to make clear the grave challenges before us.
Case in point: the horrifying eruption of antisemitism on American university campuses, especially the most elite ones.
In the summer of 2017, a relatively small group of young far-right activists descended on the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, for a so-called Unite The Right rally. The torch-bearing marchers were a motley crew of fascists, neo-Nazis, and assorted racists and Jew-haters. The Virginia governor declared a state of emergency prior to the rally. During the event, which was widely covered by U.S. media, a young radical rammed his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one and injuring 35 others.
The reaction was massive. Banks and corporations refused to do business with those associated with the march. Twitter users led a campaign to name and shame participants. When then-President Donald Trump, in his statement condemning the protesters, seemed to equivocate slightly about their badness, he stood repeatedly and vociferously condemned for it by the media, lasting throughout the rest of his presidency. The widespread reaction to Unite the Right suppressed the white nationalist movement.
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Fast forward to the current moment. At Columbia University in New York, massive rallies have been taking place nightly on campus. The supposed cause is to protest Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but the protests, which have reached a hysterical level, have turned blatantly antisemitic. Hundreds of demonstrators chant slogans supporting Hamas, the genocidal Islamist organization responsible for slaughtering over 1,000 Israeli civilians last October 7. Over the weekend, the campus’ Orthodox rabbi urged Jewish students to flee campus for their own safety.
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